Welcome to the Stanford Health Care - O’Connor Hospital Family Medicine Residency community! Our website contains specific information about our residents, faculty, and staff; our curricular components; and the facilities in which we work. In addition to the programmatic details, we hope that it gives you a good feel for the people, curriculum, and clinical and learning environment that make our program such a wonderful place to train. As in prior years, it will also be our platform to share information with you as we gear up for another exciting year of virtual interviews. While some programs have chosen to offer in-person or hybrid interviews, we feel strongly that our all-virtual format promotes better equity across applicants and is both more convenient for our applicants and healthier for our planet with respect to the reduced carbon footprint. In addition, we have been so delighted with our recent classes who joined us during the past three virtual recruitment seasons that we felt there was no need to “rock the boat,” so to speak!
Our academic sponsorship by Stanford University, combined with our status as the only residency program here at O’Connor Hospital, means that our residents get the “best of both worlds.” Our diverse and extremely talented faculty wear many hats: they teach at national meetings, are recognized leaders in the community, publish innovative curricular methods in peer-reviewed journals, and are passionate advocates for whole-person-based primary care. All of our residents learn full-spectrum family medicine, which includes strong maternity care training (now with a new Advanced Maternity Care Pathway), community medicine, and tremendous experience in family medicine-based hospital care. At the same time, our Stanford connection gives our residents access to significant academic resources and medical student teaching opportunities right here in San Jose, a large, flourishing metropolitan city and a part of the beautiful San Francisco Bay area.
Our program is located close to downtown San Jose and provides medical care to a diverse population of patients from a wide range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. We continue our strong mission to care for the underserved and have a busy inpatient and outpatient practice that includes a wide variety of adult medical, maternity, pediatric, and surgical patients. Our Family Medicine Center (a Federally Qualified Health Center caring for a predominantly Medicaid population) is a busy, inviting clinic where we provide full-spectrum care, focusing on patient-centered care. We have a robust EMR and population health registry system (OCHIN Epic) and offer special clinics and programs focusing on chronic illness management, wellness, chronic pain, behavioral sciences, substance use disorder, pediatric obesity, and clinical office procedures. We also proudly sponsor a Fellowship Program in Sports Medicine, which adds clinical, community, and sporting event coverage to our overall program, and we offer optional pathways in academic & leadership development (through our OSLER program), Integrative Medicine, and Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS). Finally, coinciding with the arrival of new ACGME requirements in Family Medicine, we have also revamped our advising/coaching model to allow our residents to have extra support from and increased touchpoints with their faculty coaches as they create their individualized learning plans. Truly, our rigorous yet flexible and learner-centered curriculum is designed to provide you with fantastic training in full-spectrum family medicine in a very supportive environment!
Our program has a close relationship with Stanford University School of Medicine, which is located 15 miles north of San Jose. Our residents have ready access to the clinical and teaching resources of the Medical Center and University and act as mentors for students contemplating a career in primary care. Furthermore, our nationally-recognized faculty development track (OSLER) gives residents a focused opportunity to teach pre-clinical and clinical Stanford medical students and learn from master clinician-educators, with the goal of developing the skills necessary to become leaders in medical education.
Historically, our program had its roots in the now-closed San Jose Medical Center. Our residency program was established in 1977 and has trained over 300 residents, most of whom have stayed in the Greater Bay Area to practice family medicine in county and community clinics, academic institutions, and private practices. In July 2005, our residency program physically moved to its current location here at O’Connor Hospital. In July 2017, our program came under the graduate medical education umbrella of Stanford University, further strengthening ties to our parent institution. Finally, in March 2019, our hospital was purchased by the County of Santa Clara. Under county ownership, we have even greater access to full-spectrum inpatient services for our hospital patients while maintaining an “unopposed” community hospital feel. We are fully accredited and enjoy the tremendous support of the large Santa Clara County & O’Connor Hospital Medical Staff, hospital administration, and the surrounding community.
We recognize that there are a multitude of excellent family medicine training options in the country. Why choose us? One simple answer – the people. We are passionate about what we do and whom we serve. When we ask residents, faculty, and staff what they like the most about our residency program, the answer is universally “the people” and the sense of belonging to a community that feels like family. Over the past 3+ years, as we were catapulted directly into the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been humbled to see how we have really come together as a program during an unprecedented time of uncertainty and change, and equally delighted now - 3 years later - to see that we have learned and adapted to new models of care delivery and education through our experiences during the pandemic. I am so proud to see how all members of our residency community have remained aligned in our shared vision and mission to care for the most vulnerable patients in our community; innovate and expand in our delivery of high-quality, up-to-date care; keep the education and safety of our learners and healthcare teams at the forefront of our activities; and support one another during these unusual times. We want to continue to attract people who share our dedication to serving those who need it the most. If you are committed to caring for the underserved and seek training in a supportive yet academically rigorous environment, please be sure to contact us. We look forward to sharing our enthusiasm with you.
Sincerely yours,
Grace Yu, MD
Program Director